Culture driven regeneration (CDR): a conceptual business improvement tool

The purpose of this paper is to present the research carried out on a conceptual approach in business improvement termed as culture driven regeneration (CDR). The research positions CDR as business improvement tool that leverages organizational learning, organization culture and corporate knowledge in implementing changes. The CDR concept is positioned half way between business process re-engineering (BPR) that thrives on radical design and process changes, and total quality management (TQM) that takes the slow and incremental approach to improvement. CDR regenerates the processes in the journey to business improvement.

A structured and a comprehensive literature review were carried out on BPR and TQM in the context of leadership, organization learning, organizational learning and corporate knowledge. The review confirmed that TQM and BPR are connected to the four areas. This connection led to the conceptualization that organizations deploy culture and corporate knowledge to drive business improvement. Organization culture and knowledge was quantified based on previous research in this area and methods applied in other research studies relating to benchmarking. There are no empirical analyses included in this paper, however knowledge and culture were given scores in illustrating the CDR concept.

This conceptual paper has pointed out that organization culture, knowledge, organizational learning and leadership are important components of a business improvement tool such as BPR and TQM. The CDR concept leverages those components and draws on the organization’s corporate culture to enable change.

Additional empirical studies are required on various types of industries, organization cultures, organization structures and professions to establish more robust scores for knowledge and culture applied in the CDR concept. The concept could be further expanded into a framework that could be applied across a number of industries.

The CDR concept is a business improvement tool that enables organizations to leverage their existing culture in driving change. The concept is built up on the existing relationship BPR and TQM has with organization learning, organization culture, corporate knowledge and the quantification of culture and knowledge.